Re: RELEASE: Exposition

"Truth" is the opinion of the majority which it can enforce on the minority. Members of the minority have two choices: join the bandwagon or think. Those who do not fall into line will be brutally crushed.The tools to maintain order are: lies, double standards, and hypocrisy. The most powerful and the most insidious of them is hypocrisy

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

I've found myself stuck on the third mission for the time being, but I do have a few first impressions I thought were worth listing.

--First off, unlike a few other people have mentioned, I didn't really have any trouble at determining who I was fighting or what I was fighting for. However, I think this was primarily because I went ahead and read some of the background information on the hosted site; if I hadn't, I probably would have been somewhat lost. Since you are essentially introducing a new universe, I think some sort of in-game overview of the current situation would go a long way, whether it's via intelligence entries in the tech room, an extended initial command briefing, some sort of opening cutscene mission, use of the fiction viewer, or whatever. On a slightly-related topic, the lack of debriefings felt kind of jarring; I think they'd help add a real sense of what you're accomplishing.

--I had no real problem with the in-mission dialogue; it got a few chuckles out of me so far, and the characters seem to have some room to be fleshed out as the story progresses. However, I think using the message start and end .wavs would help a lot, since certain sequences had several lines of dialogue flying by at once, which got a bit difficult to follow. I do think that it's the sort of script that would really benefit from voiceacting, if you guys decide to go down that route.

--From an aesthetics standpoint, I really like the ship designs you guys came up with, especially those Earth Alliance cruisers and installations. Giant ducted fans? Awesome. (Except when they manage to splat me. ) The fighters look very feasible for aerospace craft, though I'd have to assume that they have some sort of anti-gravity action going on, since they don't look like they could support themselves aerodynamically. I didn't mind the thunderstorm effect much at all; it may not be a whole lot like the real thing, but it's certainly closer than FS2's nebulae were to the genuine article. I like the weapon effects, though the capital ships' turret sound is a bit grating. Like someone mentioned before, the background image for the briefing screens was kind of distracting. I do think that coming up with some sort of custom HUD and soundtrack could have helped make the experience feel more immersive, but you guys may not have anyone on the team to handle that sort of thing, so I didn't see it as a huge deal.

--For the missions in general, I think cutting down on the waypoint-following time at the beginning would help matters, because that gets a bit trying to sit through again after dying. Also, I don't think the player is ever specifically ordered to follow Alpha 1 at the start, although that becomes sort of self-evident when you notice what everyone else is doing. I already mentioned the lack of briefings, but even the means by which the missions conclude seems a bit inconsistent: it isn't really made clear that you can't jump out yourself, and I think only one out of the first two mentioned an autopilot engaging. Making that a bit clearer might help matters.

Now, for the missions themselves:

Spoiler:

--Mission 1 was, to put it mildly, kind of brutal. I flat-out died my first time through by getting thwacked by said installation fan, but I probably would have anyway from the massive fighter presence; as it was, I only made it through the second time around with all of 7% hull remaining. I don't really mind the hulls being so weak to missile fire, since that feels like it fits in with the pre-FS1 era you're working with, but seeing as how that's the case, I think you guys went overkill on the number of enemy ships in that mission. Cutting out one or even two whole wings of fighters would have gone a long way toward making things less frenetic, and definitely would have felt more plausible. Another element that didn't help matters was that all of your wingmates seemed to remain set to "Guard Alpha Wing/1," without you having the ability to change those orders; the AI seems to fly much better with plain old "Engage enemy," which I think would have helped take some of the heat off the player's back.

--Mission 2 was a welcome reprieve after I just survived mission 1 by the skin of my teeth, but I almost feel like it swung a bit too far in the other direction. You have large fighter superiority in the mission, and after the enemy fighters dispatch, the cruisers become nothing but cannon fodder. Even before the bombers showed up, my wingmates had managed to take out one of the enemy cruisers; after that, it was a flat-out slaughter. I'm not sure exactly how to change that for the better based on your mechanics, but there has to be something you can tweak to make the mission not feel like it plays itself.

--As for mission 3...well, I haven't managed to beat it yet, and I'm starting to suspect that something isn't working as it's supposed to there. The earliest part plays all right, when you're taking out a few enemy fighter wings, but when your friendly cruisers reach the end of their waypoints, they just stop there, with no explanation given. Then, all of a sudden, one comes under attack from an enemy ship that you can't even see yet, and even when it's destroyed, absolutely no one in the mission remarks on it; you'd think that Command or one of your wingmates would be shouting out alarm at the sudden attack and giving the player some clue as to what to do. After that, everything just becomes one big jumbled mess. My wingmen started dropping like flies, which is made all the more conspicuous by the fact that they were protected in the first mission, and the bombers didn't seem to have any real effect against the two enemy destroyers. In the end, I wound up getting killed because I was completely overwhelmed by enemy fighters.

Overall, I really like the concept that you guys have created, but whatever's going on with mission 3 is preventing me from moving forward unless I cheat my way through. I'm going to hold off on playing any further for the moment, just to see if it gets resolved.

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

Overall, I really like the concept that you guys have created, but whatever's going on with mission 3 is preventing me from moving forward unless I cheat my way through. I'm going to hold off on playing any further for the moment, just to see if it gets resolved.

Regarding the 3rd mission

Spoiler:

If you get the 773rd wings to attack the Stalingrad they will eventually destroy it. The fighters are invulnerable so they'll do it eventually. Or at least I assume so since I managed to get killed when it got pegged down to 2%. I just hung back around the carriers and tried to not die. eventually I just failed the mission 5 times and skipped it

Also. Regarding the sound effects, I think the ship guns in general are too loud. While the AA off the allied carriers can get annoying, when they open up with the big guns in fleet to fleet engagements I can't even hear myself think. I turned the FX down but that didn't help in some ways because warning indicators from incoming missiles etcetera were drowned out. Had to rely on the visual cues.

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

--From an aesthetics standpoint, I really like the ship designs you guys came up with, especially those Earth Alliance cruisers and installations. Giant ducted fans? Awesome. (Except when they manage to splat me. ) The fighters look very feasible for aerospace craft, though I'd have to assume that they have some sort of anti-gravity action going on, since they don't look like they could support themselves aerodynamically. I didn't mind the thunderstorm effect much at all; it may not be a whole lot like the real thing, but it's certainly closer than FS2's nebulae were to the genuine article. I like the weapon effects, though the capital ships' turret sound is a bit grating. Like someone mentioned before, the background image for the briefing screens was kind of distracting. I do think that coming up with some sort of custom HUD and soundtrack could have helped make the experience feel more immersive, but you guys may not have anyone on the team to handle that sort of thing, so I didn't see it as a huge deal.

Keep in mind that we basically raised a campaign built for very, very primitive versions of SCP from the dead, so we didn't have a lot of modern whiz-bang to work with. As for the loud turret sounds, I picked them out to give capital ships a sense of awesome power. Often beam-less ships seem really wimpy in the audio department, so I decided to make turret fire as loud as beam fire and make the heavy turret bolts hit ships with large explosions. Perhaps I went overboard, but it certainly adds to the drama.

16:46 Quanto ****, a mosquito somehow managed to bite the side of my palm16:46 Quanto it itches like hell16:46 Woolie !8ball does Quanto have malaria16:46 BotenAnna Woolie: The outlook is good.16:47 Quanto D:

"did they use anesthetic when they removed your sense of humor or did you have to weep and struggle like a tiny baby"--General Battuta

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

Keep in mind that we basically raised a campaign built for very, very primitive versions of SCP from the dead, so we didn't have a lot of modern whiz-bang to work with. As for the loud turret sounds, I picked them out to give capital ships a sense of awesome power. Often beam-less ships seem really wimpy in the audio department, so I decided to make turret fire as loud as beam fire and make the heavy turret bolts hit ships with large explosions. Perhaps I went overboard, but it certainly adds to the drama.

Well personally I realised that a lot of the models were compartively old though that's not really something to complain about. If you redid the models we wouldn't be playing the game so I'd rather play the game with decent looking models than wait for "better" looking models and not play anything at all. You had some cool stuff going on in .. what is it mission 5 I think? The attack vector bit. I'll have to look into what you guys did and maybe steal it for Renegade Legion if that ever gets to mission building form. . . . har har.

I like the fact that the turrets have power but I think it should be turned down a tad. Like in mission 3 when the Carrier starts getting slammed that's cool. But when you've got like 10 ships and they're unloading every gun they've got for like 5 minute straight it's a little too much. Also remember that beams are loud but there are times when they're not firing.

I also noticed one problem for me. Atmospheric missions with a daytime skybox make it really hard to see the hud. Had to switch colours with something more contrasting.

Still it's cool to FINALLY play one of these so-called atmospheric missions. Even if it's just space with a skybox. Can't complain.

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

The sound of the turrets would be fine for slow firing weapons I guess. Remember that most beams in FS2 have a very low fire frequency.So either reducing the speed at which the turrets fire and increasing the damage accordingly, or making them a bit less loud would be my suggestion.

Oh and congratulations to the move into the "Fully/Partially Released" Forum

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

The last mission is in a dire need of some revision. In its current form, you better be a modder or of a fight-till-the-very-end spirit. Not everyone knows how to extract a file from a VP and find out for himself that

Spoiler:

he must die to progress with the campaign. I kept on fighting the endless waves of enemy fighters until, after some 10-15 minutes, they got my hull down to 30%. This was the moment that I decided to set myself to invulnerable and see what happens if I ~ K everything. I noticed that the Leningrad, in addition to its hull points being increased like mad, is set to invulnerable after it has suffered a sufficient amount of damage.

"Truth" is the opinion of the majority which it can enforce on the minority. Members of the minority have two choices: join the bandwagon or think. Those who do not fall into line will be brutally crushed.The tools to maintain order are: lies, double standards, and hypocrisy. The most powerful and the most insidious of them is hypocrisy

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

Overall, I thought this was a very good campaign, but it did have issues.

First, the Leningrad baseball bat/anti-physics machine, the complete overkill of nebule, excuse me, hurricane, missions, and definately the last one. For the last mission, the outcome needs to become much more clear so the player knows what to do.

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

So I managed to get past mission 3 and make it a few more missions in, so I have some more impressions to jot down. (I'm hoping one of the team staff comes in here and actually starts reading this stuff. ) I'm not going to break things down mission-by-mission, since I don't exactly remember which number was which, but instead by what I like so far vs.what's giving me trouble.

What I like:

--The skyboxes. Dear lord, those are gorgeous. The space scenes are great, but the atmospheric content really steals the show. It's amazing just how fresh and different combat feels with the simple addition of a sky and ground. The one daytime outdoor mission, 6 or 7 I think, was a total blast because of that.

--The sense of scale. There are some almost staggering numbers of destroyers and carriers being flung about, far more than we ever saw in FS2. It really portrays the sense of a very heated solar conflict.

--The main guns on the capships. There's something nice and visceral about seeing massive blobs splat against an enemy carrier and tear it to shreds.

Spoiler:

--The Hubble. I have absolutely no idea why it's still out there in the 2300s, but I don't really need to have a reason.

What I don't like:

--Contradictorily enough, the sense of scale. Way too many of these missions cross the line into Battle of Endor territory, to the point where I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing and have realized that it usually doesn't matter all that much anyway. There are too many wingmates, too many enemy fighters, and too many capital ships for the player to make much of a difference. To add to that, in at least one of the space-based missions, I think the amount of projectiles on-screen exceeded the engine limit, because my shots were disappearing on occasion.

--The lack of context in so many of these missions. As I go further in, the lack of debriefings really starts to hurt one's immersion. As soon as you get done a mission, you're whisked away to the next one, with no real sense of what you're accomplished or what's happened to you. The lack of any command briefings between missions illuminating the larger picture merely adds to the problem. And while in-mission, Command rarely seems to give you a good sense of what you're supposed to be doing; on those occasions when you are told, it's usually Alpha 1 doing the talking. You'd think that Command would comment on the destruction of friendly ships, or order you to protect/take out a certain vessel, or something along those lines, but quite frequently, it doesn't.

--The way the wingmen are handled. From the website, it seems like you guys were trying to give each of them individual characters and personalities, but they don't get to talk amongst each other frequently enough to do so. As a result, as someone mentioned earlier, when they do die, the player doesn't really feel anything at all.

--Those capital ship sound effects. During one or two of the truly big missions, I literally couldn't hear myself think due to the number and volume of sound effects playing at once. I know you wanted to go for meaty-sounding weapons, but I think you went way overboard in the process.

--I don't know if there's really anything that can be done about it, but with the daytime skybox, the default HUD becomes all but invisible. I had to switch to the all-blue option in order to see anything clearly. Again, though, unless there's some hidden SCP feature to change HUD color on a per-mission basis, that's kind of unavoidable.

As it stands, I'm enjoying the experience for the most part, but I can't get myself to truly love it, as much as I try to do so. I'm fully convinced that this has the potential to be an excellent campaign, if you guys are able to tweak and polish a few specific aspects of it.

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

The way the wingmen are handled. From the website, it seems like you guys were trying to give each of them individual characters and personalities, but they don't get to talk amongst each other frequently enough to do so. As a result, as someone mentioned earlier, when they do die, the player doesn't really feel anything at all.

Developing personalities and providing your characters with some background information is good, among developers. Every time you, as a FREDder, make one of the characters speak, you have some reference about what they would mention and what sentence structures they'd use. Would you imagine a self-centered, pompous pilot talk about how good it was to save all those people aboard the GTCv XYZ, or would he talk about the number of kills he acquired in doing so? However, putting all that background information onto your website implies that you will discover every bit of their personalities over the course of the campaign, which cannot be the case for a 12-mission campaign.

"Truth" is the opinion of the majority which it can enforce on the minority. Members of the minority have two choices: join the bandwagon or think. Those who do not fall into line will be brutally crushed.The tools to maintain order are: lies, double standards, and hypocrisy. The most powerful and the most insidious of them is hypocrisy

Re: RELEASE: Exposition

Now its just amusing (in a bad way)'Angel' "Blargh i'm dead!" (not a single shot has been fired yet )

I cheated my way through mission 3, then ended up in 4(!!!) BOE's in a row. Where my presence didn't make a bit of difference, AT ALL. And then followed by a terrrrible designed escort mission where you spend 10 horrendous boring minutes of intercepting 4 planes at the time. Coming in timed waves.The skybox on earth is nice though. The mission in the daylight skybox felt a bit like the 360 game, project slypheed. Except here you are stuck in a pityful fighter with pew pew pea shooters with command telling you "An other carrier down! Good job pilots" while I was just laughing out loud in my chair.